My Little Mahou Shoujo:Astra Knightley

Astra Knightley is a character in the My Little Mahou Shoujo game, played by Bliss Authority

Background

Astra used to know a few things about the world, most of them from her astrophysicist mother and astronomer father; that you can't get energy from nothing, that the earth orbits the sun, that magic was ancient superstition, and that trying to make friends with the petty bullies and anti-intellectuals at school was a waste of time.

Then Celestia called her, and introduced her to the dragon.

She doesn't know what else to call it (his species; Astra is perfectly aware that it goes by 'Spike,' thank you); it's a bipedal, saurian or reptilian sapient creature that can exhale green flames. Somehow, these flames can teleport small objects, particularly paper. It doesn't make a lick of sense according to everything she's learned and independently confirmed about the laws of physics. And he's so... matter of fact about it, too. It annoys her.

Oh, and they met because a talking cat (with cat-sized and shaped vocal cords, mind) with a sun on it's forehead (too regular to be a dye-job) named Celestia (she's very polite) who charged her and a bunch of mostly-strangers with the defense of the world from the forces of Nightmare Moon (and she's Dumbledore levels of cryptic about it). Also, she gave her a crown that lets her transform into the Avatar of Friendship. Complete with magical powers, and a magical girl dress out of nowhere. Literally out of nowhere, in apparent violation of conservation of energy.

Well. Okay then! Clearly the abilities that we'll call, for the moment, 'magic' are special exceptions to the laws of physics that she can evoke with very specific triggers. It's not like the laws of Newtonian mechanics were revoked by relativity, or that quantum mechanics makes relativity any less useful as a model of reality. Actually, the effects might have to do with quantum mechanical virtual particles; that's a useful line of inquiry...

Astra is in the awkward position of her magical girl abilities, well, empirically existing. More to that, there seems to be a causal relationship between genuine positive emotional connections ('Friendship') and the amount of power she can draw on; she's quite literally a force multiplier, somehow resonating between her and those she can truly call friend. Clearly more research is needed.

She's paying a lot more attention in humanities classes now, in case the 'soft' sciences might be helpful for the whole avatar of friendship thing. It also helps that she had a regular gaming group with a bunch of similarly intellectual outcasts, thanks to her brother's circle of nerds; she still doesn't understand why anyone gives Laura and Bonnie crap for being open about their romance, or how anyone with the sentience of spagnum moss can think that Ashliegh is anything short of a genius. A clumsy, cross-eyed genius, sure, but Astra has yet to win a chess match against her and her Starcraft win/loss ratio isn't looking much better.

Astra's powers are basically channeling Forces/Prime/Space abilities, and tend to have an astronomical theme; because she isn't without a sense of irony, Astra's incantations are in Latin. She cheats, though; her summoning circles are computer generated, and her grimoire is a modified iPhone. Computational sorcery is much easier than doing the math in her head, after all.

Affiliations

• Friends d10 (kind of has to be, to her surprise; I'm playing up 'I had no idea it could be this easy')
• Self d8
• Enemy d6

Distinctions

• "Anger is a rational response to injustice."
• "I'll get the checklist."
• "How can that be possible?!"

Powers

Element of Friendship/Magic

• Sorcery d10
• Astral Shield Superhuman Durability d8
• Star Bolt Blast d10
• Star Grip Telekinesis d8
• Star Step Teleportation d8
• -SFX: Star Rain - pay 1 PP to add D6 to Star Bolt and keep an additional effect die for each additional target.
• -SFX: Friendship Is Magic: Pay 1 PP to add a power trait or specialty from an ally to your dice pool, or to add one of her power traits or specialties to them.
• - Limit: Conscious Activation; if Astra suffers from emotional trauma, she's incapable of using her powers.
• - Limit: Teleportation is limited to line of sight, or to the side of a friend in danger.

The Twilight Crown (Locked)

Eventually, her crown of office will extend a transparent, violet visor and allow her to plug in to some specially modified programs on her smart-phone and allow her to work some acts of techno-sorcery.

• Heads-Up Display Superhuman Senses d10
• Sword of Twilight Weapon, pulled from her forehead d8
• Telepathy d8
• Infomantic Hacking d6
• Magical Database d6
• SFX: Thaumometric Sensors - Add 1d6 to the pool and step up the die type when using Superhuman Senses to track a monster or magical effect that you've looked up with the Magical Database.
• SFX: Precision Targeting: Spend 1 PP to step up the effect of any Element of Magic ability used on a monster or magical effect you've previously scanned with Superhuman Senses.
• Limit: The Electric Grimoire: Her crown's abilities are tied to a tablet phone, which she remotely accesses using her. If it is lost, stolen or destroyed, step down all of the abilities of the Twilight Crown.
• Limit: Conscious Activation: This will not work when Astra is not of sound enough mind to interpret the incoming data (pronounced 'has Mental Trauma.')
• Limit: Magic Mirror - Telepathy is limited to her friends - and at an expenditure of 1 PP, to any electronic device in sensory range.

Specialties

• Science Master
• Mystic Expert
• Psych Expert
• Tech Expert

Milestones

Element of Friendship

• 1 XP once per scene when you help, or make, a friend.
• 3 XP when you either settle a serious altercation between your friends, or you make things worse.
• 10 XP when you make an enemy of a friend at a critical moment, or you befriend an enemy at a critical moment.

Science, Faith, and Sorcery

• 1 XP when you dismiss something as illogical, or consider a wild theory.
• 3 XP when you test a theory about the laws of reality at personal risk.
• 10 XP when you come up with a working rational explanation for magic, or admit that no rational explanation for the supernatural can exist.

Spike is officially an NPC at this point; rather than beat my head on him as a powerset, I'm going to build Astra's crown/computer as her second power set. Or rather, she will.